Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

Or, Badass Women in Corsets

The first time I saw the trailer for Director Burr Steers’ 2016 film Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, I had two thoughts: 1) that it was a joke and/or a spoof film, and 2) that there was no way I would be going to see it. Never a fan of the spoof genre, I am however a big fan of Jane Austen books and, in large part, film adaptations of her books. I am also a fan of (some) zombie media, mostly AMC’s The Walking Dead. Of course, these two fandoms usually keep themselves rather far apart; never before in my experience had the two crossed paths, and I figured, for good reason. How would the gentle wit and dialogue of an Austen book mesh with the well-developed conventions of the zombie-horror film? Foreseeing a cinematic train wreck in the making, I wrote the film off as absurd long before it was released.

But then a group of graduate students from my institution’s literature department and my university’s own resident Austen expert, Professor Devoney Looser, arranged a special screening and discussion of the film for themselves, an event many (including the department itself) posted about on social media afterward. I was startled by this scholarly attention, and began wondering if I’d missed something. I mean, if they were going to treat the film seriously, maybe I should at least go see it and have an informed opinion of the thing.

Leaving the movie theater, I couldn’t decide if I had made a good decision or not. I now knew what all the fuss was about: it was definitely not meant to be a spoof film, at least not on purpose. But my concerns about the combination of Austonian dialogue and zombie battles proved valid; her gentle lines of dialogue were crammed in awkwardly between (and sometimes during) action scenes filled with gore and swordplay, coming off rushed and stilted.

Now, the flip side of this critique is the admirable bad-assery that was accomplished by turning the Bennett girls into trained martial artists and then setting them loose to save themselves and their aristocratic families from the ubiquitous death-by-zombie in a post-apocalyptic world. While I still haven’t quite worked out just how a woman could realistically fight in hand-to-hand combat while tightly laced into a corset and weighed down by innumerable petticoats, through movie magic, Elizabeth Bennett and her sisters do just that. These are no fragile aristocratic socialites: although they still giggle about handsome single men and discuss the merits of marriage, when the zombie hordes descend, they are ready to fight.

In many ways, this Elizabeth Bennett reminded me of another Elizabeth, the indomitable Miss Swan from Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean film series. Although working hard to meet the expectations of her father and upper-class society, Elizabeth Swan is, at her core, a badass. The change in her character over the course of the series is dynamic: she goes from suffering a near-fatal fainting spell in the first movie (cause by a too-tight corset) and the constant abductee of pirates, to a strong and independent woman determined to take matters into her own hands: by movie number 3, At World’s End, she becomes a pirate captain, is elected the King of Pirates, declares war and goes on swashbuckling with gusto right alongside the best (and the worst) of them.

What Pirates accomplished and P&P&Z does not, however, is a certain narrative cohesiveness between action scenes, dialogue, wit and elements of horror. The seam lines between Austen charm and zombie flick are clearly visible all the way through, leaving an overall impression of amateurishness and hokeyness that I would guess the filmmakers were actually trying to avoid. Many of the effects were done well, the fight scenes were engaging, and I simply adore lead actor Lily James, a bias that for me makes up for any number of cinematic sins.

Beyond that, my feminist sensibilities would have me claim this film as another step toward better and more empowered female protagonists in film, despite its many flaws. The Bennett girls have as few choices in this film as they do in the original Austen books, if you think about it: they are still creatures of their day and circumstances. The strictures of high society have simply been replaced with the rigors of a post-apocalyptic world. I do like that the overwhelming Austonian focus on marriage as a woman’s ultimate accomplishment was toned down a bit, even though the film nauseatingly but not unexpectedly succumbed to the inexorable gravitational pull of Austonian wedding bells in the end. It seems that not even a zombie apocalypse can change everything.